While the musical number now operates as a generic disruption, it
has also been reintegrated into the narrative. The sitcom has developed
into a more sophisticated and flexible genre, often incorporating a
more realistic view of life, which does not demand resolution at the
end of every half-hour. Repetition starts to shade over into progression.

While Murphy Brown was abrasive and satirical and had its
disruptive moments, the musical number in Murphy Brown tended
to be more realistic: though still comedic, it carried an unusual poignancy.
Most commonly, as in the first episode, the number is performed by Murphy
at the end of a long day—like Joel Goodson (Tom Cruise) in Risky
Business, she turns on the stereo and sings along uninhibitedly.
On an obvious level, Murphy’s utter inability to carry a tune
is a kind of musical slapstick; it is also a leveling factor that, like
Lucy’s lack of talent, and can be read in a number of ways. It
is a kind of containment—Murphy is successful in her career as
television news reporter, but she is hopeless at one thing that she
lovesa symbol of her frustrated personal life. It is also a kind
of liberation—away from the stresses of her job, in the protected
space of her living room, she can indulge in her musical passions. Music
is a constant in Murphy’s life, and participates in intratextual
references with 1960s R&B in general and Aretha Franklin’s
performance of Carole King’s “(You Make Me Feel Like a)
Natural Woman” in particular. Murphy sings this song at the end
of the first episode, and later in the series tries to sing it with
Aretha Franklin; the song is given a whole new meaning when she sings
it to her newborn son.

Candice Bergen as
Murphy Brown

The generations of the Brown family are also brought together through
a common appreciation of music. Murphy’s mother, Avery, embraces
the music of her youth (Billie Holiday) just as her daughter does, and
baby Avery (named after her mother, after a protracted gag emulating
the running secretary joke and subsequent nanny joke) develops an “unfortunate”
attachment to Barry Manilow. The year-long running joke caused by the
conflicting musical tastes of mother and child is defused at Avery’s
first birthday party, when he is serenaded by Manilow himself. The incongruity
of the situation, Murphy’s exasperation, the appreciation of the
real Manilow’s ability to take all the ribbing and even participate
in it, and the lyrics of the song “I Am Your Child” layer
irony and humor. Cynics may dismiss these occasions as sentimental piffle,
but in the context of an otherwise brash show, they are a touch of the
power music holds in real life—music’s power may be a myth,
but the persistence of that myth makes it a difficult one to dislodge.

In a nostalgic show like The Wonder Years (198893),
music’s ability to evoke memory and emotion is particularly powerful.
Unlike most sitcoms, the half-hour show was shot
on film33 and is more of a half-hour
drama with comedic elements. As is more common for dramas, the music
tends to be non-diegetic, and along with other generic markers, the
way music is used also crosses genre boundaries. Popular music is especially
useful in establishing time period, as in this show set in the early
1970s, and as we can also note in the time-traveling science fiction
show Quantum Leap (198993), as well as in such jukebox
films as American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) and The
Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan, 1983). Like The Big Chill,
The Wonder Years has a dual historical setting. This is more
obvious in The Big Chill, where friends who meet in 1983 are
gauging how much their lives have changed since their college years
in the 1960s. Motown songs provide the soundtrack of their idealistic
youth. In The Wonder Years, the diegetic setting is clearly
in the past, but the voiceover narrative is that of young Kevin Arnold
all grown up. The music gains significance from the adult Kevin Arnold’s
point of view, not only establishing his place in the past but his emotions
in the present. These are perhaps not best called “musical numbers”
but “musical moments.”

Scrubs (2001present), a sitcom spoof of medical dramas,
is emerging as one of the most adventurous shows yet in its use of music.
There is nothing particularly innovative about any of the techniques
used, but their breadth is unusual. In contrast to a show like Ally
McBeal, where certain elements became part of the style and predictable
in key situations, Scrubs’ use of music is irregular
and therefore unpredictable, keeping that sense of the unexpected that
can be funny, or occasionally dramatic. In an early episode (“My
Best Friend’s Mistake”), a recording of
Erasure’s “A Little Respect” played during an operation
develops into a musical number similar to Murphy Brown’s “You
Keep Me Hanging On,” drawing in the various characters. Yet, the
song itself is not such a literal joke—it has significant emotional
resonance for the characters. The show often features a pensive non-diegetic
musical finale, showing a montage of characters under a commentative
song—but usually overlaid with idealistic inter JD’s (Zach
Braff) reflective commentary (the show bears similarities to both M*A*S*H
and The Wonder Years); this “adagio finale” is
a convention of hour-long television drama from Miami Vice
through to Ally McBeal. “Beautiful World,” by singer-songwriter
Colin Hay, is the playout of “My Last Day,” the final episode
of the first season—the song is the ironic coda to a series of
devastating personal revelations made by a vindictive Jordan (Christa
Miller), the ex-wife of JD’s menor/nemesis Perry Cox (John C.
McGinley), that drives all the characters apart. Then, Colin Hay himself
appears as a troubadour in the first episode of the second season (“My
Overkill”). He has an intriguingly ambiguous presence, appearing
onscreen, but magically transcending place and time through the continuity
of edits, achieving a fluidity usually associated with non-diegetic
music. He interacts with the characters “silently” in terms
of dialogue, but they react to his presence with quizzical glances as
if recognizing the non-diegetic music “in the flesh,” and
he appears to haunt JD, following him from the street to the hospital
and into the morgue. Finally, Dr. Cox takes Hay’s guitar and smashes
it against a wall in annoyance—the troubadour helpfully offers,
“I have other songs.”

More overtly comic, “My Way or the Highway”
is Scrubs’ parody of West Side Story, a musicalization
of the competition between the medical and surgical interns that features
regularly on the show.34 Yet one of the
most emotional moments in the entire series is also the most theatrical:
in “My Philosophy,” a vibrant young woman awaits a heart
transplant but is realistic about her chances. She speaks of going out
“like in a Broadway musical.” This narrative cue is fulfilled
at the end when she dies and the entire cast participates in a big Broadway
ballad number, which is clearly framed as a fantasy, fading in and out
on her empty hospital bed. The pensive finale and the theatrical number
are combined into one powerful gesture.

In a bittersweet comedy like Scrubs, music’s
usual position as a gag has been inverted, whether narratively or generically.
This sitcom draws on both the unexpectedness of register-shifting that
could easily provoke laughter, and music’s dramatic and emotional
power, heightening its effect with this double-switch. But in certainly
the most self-reflexive of musical commentary in the show, the sepulchral
hospital lawyer Ted (Sam Lloyd) incongruously turns out to be part of
a barbershop quartet: their repertoire? Sitcom theme songs.35

The presence of sitcom re-runs on televisionespecially when
self-consciously framed as on Nick at Nite or TV Land, and intertwined
with the availability of old films on television and videocreates
new sets of references that are, if not completely ahistorical, then
based in a less-than-linear history. This media- and technology-based
persistence of memory gives rise to two divergent impulses: the classicizing,
or canon-building, which sets up some shows as “great,”
and the more relativizing reception that views sitcoms from various
historical periods on a level playing field. Home video releases tend
to reinforce the formation of a canon, as does the prevalence of certain
syndicated shows: in America, the sheer number of times over the average
lifetime that one has had an opportunity to see I Love Lucy
makes it common cultural currency; in England, The Phil Silvers
Show—a show rarely seen in American syndication—holds
a similar position. The profusion of fairly undifferentiated syndicated
re-runs on independent stations allows for relativizing (of course,
a certain initial commercial success is necessary in order to generate
enough episodes for “stripping,” or showing an episode every
weekday without undue repetition). More specialized cable channels have
more flexibility: Nick at Night can actually serve both functions, screening
full evenings of stripped classics; The Paramount Comedy Channel in
England can strip shows like Frasier and Cheers, mixing
them in with shows like Flying Blind and Girls on Top
which did not generate all that many episodes, but which have a quirky
appeal or started the careers of stars.

The presence of musical numbers in classic American sitcoms, especially
significant ones like I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke
Show, makes them generically available, as a comparison with
British sitcoms highlights (the British film industry never really
grasped the
musical genre, either). British sitcoms, with very few exceptions,
tend to be even more conservative in form and content than American
ones,
and very, very few offer musical numbers. Two exceptions that do, have
extra-generic reasons for doing so. Goodnight, Sweetheart (1993–99)
is about Gary, a time-traveling bigamist, with one wife in the
1990s
and one in wartime 1940s. Gary pretends to be a songwriter to explain
his lack of a 1940s occupation, and he continually passes off songs
written after the war as his own work. A simple historical disjunction
creates the joke: laughter invariably ensues as he performs a Beatles
or Elton John song in a World War II setting.

The short-lived The High Life (1994) was a surreal farce with
a Busby Berkeley-style credit sequence. This opening sequence immediately
lets the viewer know that this is a high-camp world of gay men, or men
coded as gay (Steve McCracken (Forbes Masson) and Sebastian Flyte (Alan
Cumming) are, most stereotypically, air stewards), who communicate through
pop culture references that are themselves a kind of “code”—even
Steve’s apparently heterosexual obsession with a fellow female
flight attendant is because she reminds him of the mermaid Marina from
Gerry Anderson’s puppet show Stingray (1963). While Steve
is off romancing with her in the swimming pool to Aqua Marina’s
theme song, Sebastian is tucked up in bed under his Stingray
duvet with an array of skin-care products (their flight crew chief Shona
McSpurtle (Siobhan Redmond) pops in to borrow some from him). The overt
display of and play with coded communication is one of the pleasures
of camp—flaunting the secret while connecting clearly with those
“in the know,” and the profusion of pop culture references
offer an abundance of entry points for the enjoyment of the show.

In its six episodes, the storylines of The
High Life became increasingly absurd (having spent months on finding
the perfect Eurovision song title—“Piff Paff Puff”—the
boys need to write the song over the weekend; a crazed cookie mogul
kidnaps Sebastian and Shona in search of the perfect oatcake recipe)
and the cross-references to other genres and cultural moments grew denser,
encompassing corporate anthems, the Eurovision Song Contest, the 1960s
Batman television series, Star Trek, and Torvill &
Dean’s 1984 Olympic Bolero.36
Song lyrics and titles commonly infested the dialogue. Here, the musical
number operates on multiple levels, offering pleasure through interlocking
recognition and appreciation: the number itself as a display of performance
skill; the referential nature of the number, whether recalling general
or specific other cultural forms or texts; the disjunction—or
even more potently, the unexpected correlation—between a musical
number and its (a)historical referent; and a second order of performance
skill based on the incorporation of previous genres into new ones. The
extremity of a series like The High Life pushes genre borders
to their breaking point, but in doing so it points up quite clearly
how these border transgressions operate.

The sitcom is very much like a popular song—most
examples have more or less the same form; the pleasure is in the details.
Though surprisingly persistent, and very common in two of the most popular
and enduring of sitcoms, the musical number has also become a foreign
object in the narrative of the sitcom, and this foreignness renders
it even more comedic. It provides pleasure in both its plenitude—the
skill of performance—and its lack—the disruption of narrative
and generic coherence. Sitcoms repetitive and cyclical nature
has led at least one influential scholar to ascribe a ritual function
to the sitcom, a reinforcement of cultural values through crisis and
resolution (Newcomb 28). In an increasingly secular society, for better
or for worse, the sitcom probably wields broader cultural power than
most other rituals.37 And most cultures—ours
included, it seems—tend to celebrate their rituals with singing
and dancing.

33.
Sitcoms are typically shot on videotape in front of a live audience.
While this gives a theatrical immediacy to such shows, it typically
does not
allow for location shooting expense nor the sophisticated manipulations
of the image available on film (for instance, the montages that
are a stylistic feature
of The Wonder Years and many hour-long dramas). Videotape also
does not allow for the manipulation of the soundtrack, such as The
Wonder Years’ voice over narration, non-diegetic sound effects,
and the careful integration of those elements with both non-diegetic
music
and diegetic dialogue and sound, that film can afford.

34.
A fair number of dramas have done “musical episodes” in the
past decade—Xena: Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, Oz—though the context is very different.
In the first two instances, the shows are about magic and fantasy
to begin
with. In Oz, the use of music to critique violent relationships
and the criminal justice system has an obvious but powerfully ironic
effect.
I think what made this acceptable in a way that Cop Rock was
not is that the show’s theatrical structure, with a Shakespearean
on-screen omniscient narrator, already lends itself to the inclusion
of
musical numbers generically. We should also not underestimate the fact
that Oz is an HBO show, and therefore not under the same commercial
pressure of attracting a broad audience as a network show.

35. This is part of a larger pattern
of references to old sitcoms scattered throughout the show—for instance
Dr. Cox’s sarcastic names for JD include “Laverne,”
“Shirley,” and “Joanie,” referring to the Happy
Days world.

36. Most of these referents themselves
are exceptionally campy, particularly Eurovision and Batman.

37. Anthropologist Victor Turner
would call this a progression from the “liminal” to the “liminoid,”
from a truly transformative cultural experience to the representation
of one in, usually, a commodified form. “One works at the
liminal, one plays with the liminoid” (55).